Some drivers who haven’t had the best of seasons likely entered Sunday’s race at Kansas Speedway just hoping to get the 2012 season over quickly so they can start fresh in 2013.

But for others, they need to make the most of the final five races in hopes of finding a new ride for next season.

So for a driver such as Regan Smith, his seventh-place finish in a substitute role for Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a big deal.

His engine blew a week earlier, spoiling a solid run at Charlotte in his first race in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports car. So finishing seventh in a car that Earnhardt has thrived in all year showed that Smith could get the job done.

Smith isn’t even sure if he’ll race this week at Martinsville Speedway with Earnhardt expected to return after recovering from a concussion.

He might drive Phoenix Racing’s No. 51 car but wasn’t sure Monday morning. And while he hopes he will drive for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports Nationwide Series team next year—Rick Hendrick all but said Sunday that he would—Smith still must prove himself to doubters after getting released from Furniture Row Racing in favor of Kurt Busch.

“It’s been nice to be able to step in and have them treat me like their normal driver,” Smith said. “I know Dale is excited to get back, so that is going to be good for him. Looking forward to whatever comes next for me.”

Smith wasn’t the only driver who possibly turned some heads at Kansas.

Travis Kvapil posted a 17th-place finish and Landon Cassill was 18th, more than respectable for the new BK Racing team.

Timmy Hill, driving for FAS Lane Racing, finished 22nd in his second career start.

Two that got away

Two drivers were having surprisingly good runs Sunday, only to see them ruined by wrecks or parts failures.

Aric Almirola led 69 laps for Richard Petty Motorsports before having a tire go down and hitting the wall.

“I am disappointed,” Almirola said. “I have never in my entire life had a racecar that good. It was so fast and so easy to drive. … I hate that it ends like this but I have always been told you have to give a few away before you can win one, and I feel like we certainly gave one away today.”

Kurt Busch also had a strong run in his second race with Furniture Row before hitting the wall a couple of times. He knows he’ll be back in the Furniture Row car and the run was a good building block.

“Our overall performance was indeed much better than our finish,” Busch said. “There was just too much to overcome.

“But on the bright side, we have a race team that proved today that we can run up front. There is no doubt in my mind that we had at least a top-five car.”

Another second for Truex

Martin Truex Jr. finished second at Kansas back in April, but his runner-up finish Sunday was much different.

In April, Truex led 173 laps but finished second to Denny Hamlin as Hamlin’s car came to life at the end of the race and Truex’s car faded.

On Sunday, Truex ran in the top 10 most of the day but didn’t emerge at the front until the final restart.

“We were second here in the spring, but today was a whole different mood, obviously,” Truex said. “We had to battle for this one all day long.”

Welcome back, Slugger

Paul Menard had crew chief Slugger Labbe back from a six-week suspension at Kansas, and part of his absence might have contributed to Menard’s third-place finish Sunday.

Labbe brought some new ideas to the team that he had been working on during recent test sessions, and Menard’s car had more speed than in recent weeks.

“He is well rested after six weeks off and had some good ideas to try this weekend,” Menard said. “It's a game of track position, and we had a good car.”

One of the reasons Richard Childress Racing dropped its appeal of Labbe’s penalty—which was for an illegal frame rail at Michigan—was to have Labbe at Kansas, where the teams got two days of testing Wednesday and Thursday.

“He had a lot of ideas,” Menard said. “Luckily we had two days to work through them.

“(We) kind of hit on something (Saturday) morning that we liked, thought was promising, stuck with it. Obviously running the Nationwide car (Saturday) on a new surface, we learned a lot about tire pressures, what grooves come in. The second groove came in a hell of a lot better than I think anybody thought.”